


Black Body Radiation

by Aoluas Anminti (AoluasAnminti)



Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Ficlet Collection, Interspecies Awkwardness, Interspecies Relationship(s), Interspecies Romance, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Xenophilia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-15
Updated: 2017-05-15
Packaged: 2018-11-01 00:25:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10910517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AoluasAnminti/pseuds/Aoluas%20Anminti
Summary: A series of shorts, not necessarily in chronological order, depicting my thoughts on Thane Krios' relationship with my femShep, not meant to tell a coherent long term story.Think of them as moments. His feelings, her feelings, lots of introspection and discussion (because it'sThane, so duh).





	1. Stars and Sihas

There was no reason to consider it unlike any other moment, Thane thought. Not to an outside observer. And some part of him pitied them, ignorant as they were to the being who strode among them.

They were on Illium again, this time to recruit a Justicar—dangerous and unlikely a proposition as that seemed to him, but nothing Shepard had done so far fit in the categories of either “likely” or “safe”, so he had resolved simply to observe. Their team—Shepard, himself, Garrus and Miranda—had been in the marketplace near the shuttle docks. Shepard had been looking out at the skyline, less admiring than most, accepting Garrus’ assertion that Illium was a shinier Omega with a wry quirk of her lips. Thane had glanced back and, just there, the perfect angle.

The sun setting behind her, fattened and dimmed to something just shy of blinding by the atmosphere. Her form, softened and outlined within it, a dark yet shining core. He thought of black body radiation, and stars, and goddesses, and she was separate from none of those concepts. Astounding and uncompromising and unstoppable, a force of nature, violent and vicious and sustaining. She gave her energy to those who followed her, those pulled in by the gravity and charisma of her, and all flourished under her command. She rose from death itself to immediately command strangers working for a terrorist organization, recruited aliens onto a xenophobic human ship, and seemed to expect no conflict. He had thought her perhaps naïve, but on observation considered that such things simply could not stand in the face of the sheer force of her. Worlds changed to accommodate her as she moved past and through them.

And is not arrogance only arrogance when one’s abilities are exaggerated?

He thought, I do not know her well enough, in an anachronistic echo, but I can name her “Siha”.

~*~

Many weeks later, when she had saved his son and attended to the needs of almost all her combat crew, a few days after they had clasped each other's hands and accepted an as-yet nebulous “more” to their relationship, he shared that memory with her.

She gave him a somewhat nonplussed smile and he wondered if something had perhaps translated poorly. He considered explaining himself, or attempting to, but knew that he could not correct a miscommunication he did not know existed, and that attempting to was just as likely to confuse matters. He waited.

Shepard disengaged one hand and he slackened his grip on the other, thinking she meant to pull away. She gave him a light squeeze with her remaining hand, reassuring him that perhaps, at least, he had not offended her.

“Sometimes…” she sighed and trailed off, and he brushed his fingers over her knuckles. That garnered another reassuring squeeze, but she looked down at the table and then off towards his weapons display, unseeing, brow faintly furrowed. He waited. “The way you see me, Thane. Sometimes… I wonder. Maybe it's different, with Drell, your religion—I don't know.”

She was being unusually indirect, and he pressed his fused fingers against her palm, pulling her hand a fraction closer, drawing her eyes back to him. “You wonder what, Siha?” Where the word—more affectionate appellation than title now—usually made her expression lighten, the furrow in her brow deepened slightly. “What may be different?”

Her mouth opened and closed, her lips pursed. She began to look away again, and he raised one hand feather light to her jaw. Tell me.

“I—I'm not sure which idioms translate. If—do you know what I mean if I say you're putting me on a pedestal?”

He smiled slightly. “I can read and speak English, Sih—Shepard.” And could read several other human languages besides.

Her lips twitched in a fleeting smile. “Perfect memory must help with languages, huh?”

“Yes.” He paused, considering. “Is it not common for humans to call each other angels, even gods and goddesses?”

“Yes, but—“ she sighed, raising her free hand to her neck as though to rub away an ache, and looked down at their hands, her thumb running the seam between his fused fingers. He suppressed his response, sure that she did not know what that hinted at. Yet. She glanced down and to herself muttered in Palaveni rendered strangely flat by her sole set of vocal chords “I'm going to sound like a spirits-damned idiot.” In English, she said “I want you to see me. I mean that—I still fuck up, you know?” She winced at herself. “Eloquent. Damn it.”

“Would not a rose by any other name smell as sweet?” He smiled.

She narrowed her eyes at him and playfully poked his shoulder. “You're not getting to me by being all romantic and quoting Shakespeare, alright? Besides isn't that from Romeo and Juliet? I'd rather not think I'm following in the footsteps of a couple of fictional teenage idiots whose blind ardor got them killed.” She stroked between his fingers again and he shifted his grip, leaving the heel of his hand most available to her roving thumb. “But…I mean, that's how I thought of it. Just a nickname, or not—I mean—a meaningful nickname. But, that star thing…”

“What bothered you?”

“Stars…I don't want to be a star. Not even in the figurative sense; I never wanted to be famous. But now I am and it comes with all this bullsh—I mean, all these—functionally, they're prejudices. All these attitudes people have about me, these preformed ideas, this image that nothing and no one could live up to. I’d resigned myself to only being friends with the people who knew me before Sovereign, but then I met you and honestly you were the only person on this ship who even asked me how I was doing until I got Garrus to pull his head out of his ass and when Miranda asked she was mostly just checking on her project because if she really cared there wouldn't be a thrice-damned skylight in my cabin and—“ Shepard cut herself off abruptly, tucking her chin into her chest. The hand at her neck had curled into a fist and she hit her clavicle with it lightly, as if in reprimand. “Yeah, I'm good at this,” she breathed, mocking.

Thane gathered her fisted hand, smoothing it out and bringing it to join the other, placing her hands between his. “Siha.” It took several moments, but she looked up at him. “I do not forget that you are human.” He brushed the hair over her ears, always seeming to escape her crisp utilitarian bun, back into order, and allowed himself to indulge momentarily in a very male satisfaction at her shiver. “I know that you are fallible, and vulnerable, and mortal. Whether you are a siha is a more religious and metaphysical discussion, perhaps for later. I call you ‘Siha’ in the same manner I think endearments like ‘angel’ are best meant—that I see the qualities of the divine in you.” He cupped her cheek and she leaned into the contact instinctively, but worried her lip with her teeth.

“I—understand, but… you made it sound like all I have to do is show up and things will be better, things will reform to suit me, and that's…”

“True,” he finished for her, “without being the complete truth. And I did not say that it does not cost you.”

“It hardly costs a star to capture a planet.”

“Not a planet like a garden world,” he allowed, “but a Jovian planet can change things significantly. And it is also possible that for many objects in space, a star only alters their trajectory. Natural laws dictate that in proportional measures, the star’s path is altered in its turn.”

She hummed and leaned further into his hand, letting her eyes fall half-lidded. “You're right.” She huffed a laugh at herself. “And there is such a thing as overextending a metaphor. Okay.”

They lingered like that, his hand on her cheek, stroking over her cheekbone, until her eyes fell closed. Eventually, Thane noted “You were not wrong to be…wary, Siha.”

Shepard’s eyes opened lazily. “Oh?”

Thane’s eyes flicked down in a gesture she had learned usually preceded a bout of what he called solipsism, but he seemed to resist it with some effort. “I believe that a problem in my relationship with Irikah—a significant problem—was how much I allowed my first impressions of her, mistaking her for the goddess Arashu, to color how I related to her—or did not relate to her—later on. When I could not reconcile the truth of her with that first memory, I would withdraw until I had. Work…was familiar. And…”

“’Eventually you were always away on business’,” Shepard quoted back to him. Thane closed his eyes and tilted his head in another gesture she had learned from him—regret, shame—and she held his hand against her face when he would have withdrawn. “Hey.” When he looked at her again, she smiled slightly. “Let's just say we're both fallible then, huh?” She turned and kissed his palm, filing the way his fingers twitched to analyze later, and smiled more broadly at him. “At least the mistakes we've made give us some of the pitfalls to avoid. Better than nothing, right?”

He smiled his slight smile back at her. She noticed that he never revealed his teeth when he smiled and she wondered if she had been rude with him very often, showing hers. “Infinitely, in fact.”


	2. Idioms

They had their differences. Not disagreements—or, not many. She continued to see the Compact as so much sanitized slavery and he felt that her misunderstanding was down to some fault in his explanation. Shepard, of course, did not think she was misunderstanding him at all and did not see any excuse for training a child into a killer. She appreciated his skills and had never judged him for his work (he found that, interestingly, when the topic came up recently she flushed and tensed, and he strongly suspected that it _aroused_ her). Physically they had found no difference off-putting yet, though they hadn't “slept” together (Thane found the subtly prudish human tendency to refer to sex as sleeping somewhat confounding, and context did not always make the intended meaning of “sleeping” clear—though he supposed it was better than referring to it as “knowing”, which they had been wont to do in times past), both of them were confident that it would not be difficult. His research (and Joker’s worryingly large archives of pornography) had indicated that they likely had little to worry about in that area. No, it was the conversational, almost lexical differences that brought him up short, though Shepard seemed to "roll with them".

 

Not long after their discussions about “stars and Sihas”—as Shepard put it—he had attempted a romantic overture which fell rather flat.

 

They’d been on his cot in life support, his back to the wall and her sitting between his legs, snugly against him, as she sought to explain the concept of “herding cats” by showing him the relevant animal on her omnitool. He watched the videos she called up, amused—and just how many creatures on her homeworld have hair, he wondered? Humans were beginning to seem unique in having so _little_ —and had relaxed into her, his subvocals shifting to a consistent, contented thrum. She'd smiled at that, pressing back against him, before telling him he reminded her of a big cat, and before he'd had time to think she just meant a larger version of the domestic predator, she'd called up images of “big cats”. After a few minutes of browsing she told him that if she had to choose, he was most like the dark, sleek panther.

 

New as the creature was to him, he had no strong feelings about the comparison, but her tone was such that she obviously meant it as a compliment and so he took it as one. He had settled his arms around her waist and she’d relaxed into him then abruptly changed her mind, squirming and churning until she straddled him and pressed her lips to his.

 

The kiss had escalated quickly and he’d borne her down to the cot, holding himself over her, kissing and nipping at her neck and jaw as she’d whispered encouragement and breathless urging.

 

He wasn't entirely sure what had come over him—the phrase was “corny” in human terms, but as his mouth reached her collarbone and his hands snaked over the skin of her waist underneath her shirt, he’d murmured “You are a loop in my heart.”

 

Thane had paused, cringing somewhat at the cliché (and the depth of feelings it betrayed when she had said they didn’t know each other well enough to be in love), and Shepard had paused, confused.

 

The explanation of Drell cardiovascular structure and comparison of colloquialisms that followed had definitely changed the mood if not ruined it, and he'd finally settled for just laying next to her, holding her. She had faced him, returned his embrace and laughed softly, murmuring something about “intercultural communication”.

 

Eventually Shepard had nudged his chin with her nose, caught his gaze and with a grin, suggested “another turn at bat”. When both his translator and his knowledge of English (drawn largely from philosophical treatises and classic Earth literature) had utterly failed to parse that phrase, he had looked at her with faint exasperation. With an elegant shrug that served as much to bare her shoulder from her disheveled civvies as to express her relaxation, she'd pressed her lasciviously soft human lips to his fringe. “I _revel_ in our differences, Thane.” She straddled him, allowing one of her legs to hang off the cot to the floor. “You aren't going to let a few untranslatable idioms stop us, are you?”

 

_How typical of her, to smoothly turn an obstacle to an advantage._ “Of course not, Siha,” he’d purred, feeling her thighs clench reflexively on his waist, reacting to his voice. He’d smiled, slipping his hands along her hips, back over firm curves, and pulling her flush against him.

 

His name threaded through her light gasp and low moan had been the last thing even remotely like speech out of either of them for some time after that.

 


	3. Deadeye

“Ha! _Another one bites the dust_ , Vakarian! Top _that_!” Shepard sing-songed over comms.

 

Thane allowed himself a moment of amusement. Between Shepard and Vakarian, there was nothing for him to do below them, taking point and acting as melee insurance if any mercenaries escaped the snipers. None had yet—not even close. They were leaving him very little to actually _do_ , so he deemed a brief deviation from his professional mode allowable.

 

Garrus grumbled, his flanged voice low and just shy of petulant. “He didn’t _bite_ anything. You blew his head off.”

 

“From 800 meters away, in the wind, between two crates, as he moved.”

 

“Yeah, yeah.”

 

Thane could imagine Shepard’s free, cocky, teasing grin as though he were seeing it himself. He had a fair idea of what expression Garrus was wearing, too. He readied himself as he kept slipping along the path below them, seeing two more mercenaries coming out to join the fray. A salarian and an asari.

 

They were barely out the door when they crumpled with neat holes in their foreheads.

 

“Oh, _yeah_!” Garrus crowed.

 

“No, that's—”

 

“ _That_ ,” Garrus interrupted, “is me ‘topping that’, Shepard.”

 

"You don't get credit for your targets being idiots and _lining up_ for you!"

 

“I know it pains you how much better I am, Shepard,” Garrus said in mocking consolation, his subvocals near to trilling with amusement and smugness “but what was it you said the other day? ‘We have to play with the cards we're dealt, and confront the reality of the situation’?”

 

“I hate you.”

 

“You _love_ me. You'd be lost without me.”

 

“You're lucky I like you, Vakarian. Which is my point. That was _luck_.”

 

“It was an _opportunity_ that I took. Sorry you missed it.”

 

Thane’s eyes scanned the field as he slunk his way to the warehouse where the mercs had been coming from in waves over the last hour. “No more movement or sound inside.” He determined. “Warehouse is clear.” In amidst Garrus and Shepard’s banter, they pinged nonverbal acknowledgment.

 

“Come on, Shepard,” Garrus crooned. “Admit it.”

 

“No.”

 

“Admit it~”

 

“How are we the same age?”

 

“Admit it~”

 

“Ugh!” The clatter of armor and equipment came over the comms. “Oh, Mister Vakarian, _sir_ , how could I _ever_ have questioned your abilities?”

 

Garrus snorted. “Shepard, get off your back and either turn your gun the right way up or pack it away.”

 

Apparently Shepard did neither. Thane cocked his head towards a low thrumming noise. “I knew there was a reason you were called Archangel, besides making all the ladies _swoon_.” Garrus snorted and Thane couldn’t resist his huff of amusement, though it seemed to remind both other parties that he could hear them.

 

“Hey Krios, you saw it up close. Back me up here.”

 

“Yes, Thane, remind him that it takes more than dumb luck to be a master of your craft.”

 

“Dumb luck?” Garrus repeated incredulously, feigning hurt.

 

Thane hesitated. He was still new to the team and though he would already call Shepard a friend and more, he had yet to feel at ease enough with the rest of them to attempt humor without risking offense. Never mind that it was not something he felt particularly skilled at. “It _was_ a very impressive shot, Siha.”

 

Garrus' " _Thank_ you!” and Shepard's gasped (and heatless) “ _Traitor_!” came over the comms at the same time, followed by a series of light whumps that he guessed were the two of them pushing or punching each other playfully. If they had been the same species, he would have thought they were siblings, the way they were supremely ate ease with and teased each other.

 

The thrumming had grown louder and the source was finally visible. “Shuttle incoming. More hostiles,” Thane noted. “I expect they'll land on the roof and jump down.” For a couple of seconds it seemed they hadn't heard him, but then his comm pinged with simultaneous acknowledgements.

 

"Come on, off your back. Gun up.”

 

“You don't tell me what to do. Who's the Commander here?”

 

“The one currently sitting on her ass with her gun upside-down like—”

 

Thane heard the familiar sharp _crack_ of Shepard’s Widow, and the incoming shuttle veered right over the landing zone, crashing into a building next to Shepard and Garrus’ position before pinwheeling into a rock face, coming down in a rather impressive fireball.

 

There was a beat of silence. “Holy shit,” Garrus murmured.

 

“You were saying?” Shepard replied, smirk clear in her voice. “I think we can all agree I just topped you topping that.”

 

“…Thane? You see that?”

 

“Yes,” Thane answered. “A clean shot to the pilot. Astounding, Shepard.”

 

Garrus breathed. “Yeah, not going to argue with that. While upside down, too. Her _and_ her gun. Or, well, on her back.”

 

No more shuttles seemed to be incoming. They collapsed and holstered their weapons, Thane waited for the other two to join him, and between the three of them triple checked the outer area and warehouse, finishing their business there and returning to their own shuttle. Garrus gave a brief overview of the assignment to the pilot, who whistled.

 

“Yeah, I saw that come down. From a klick away? One shot? Damn, Commander.”

 

Garrus nodded, chucking. “So I guess that's that bet settled. For now, anyway. Did anyone have any money on it?”

 

The pilot laughed quietly and rubbed at his neck in a way that was definitely _not_ a “no”.  “We're all beginning to learn that it's never smart to bet against the Commander.”

 

Garrus clapped him on the shoulder, mandibles wide in a grin. “Damn right.”

 

Shepard, sitting next to Thane on the uncomfortably narrow seats, leaned into him and nudged his side slightly. “Wanna hear a secret?” she stage whispered.

 

Thane smiled. “If you like, Siha.”

 

Making no real attempt to keep from being overheard, Shepard lifted a cupped hand to her mouth. “I was aiming at the pilot-side thrusters. Garrus is still the better sniper.”

 

Garrus and the pilot laughed, and Thane smiled. Shepard returned it with a soft smile of her own.

 

He was absolutely convinced that she was lying, but it was more important that her best friend be recognized and proud of his accomplishments than she receive credit for doing one more impossible thing. Looking into her eyes, he was convinced that she knew he knew. Glancing at Garrus, the way he looked at Shepard with complete admiration and loyalty, Thane rather suspected that the turian knew as well. _He adores her_.

 

_Later_ on the Normandy, as Shepard dozed in his arms after they'd spoken for hours, passing time between relay jumps, Thane thought back to the moment in the shuttle. Vakarian and Shepard were best friends—the turian likely didn’t even know that he was in love with her. He wasn't possessive and didn't disapprove of her relationship or anything of that sort. Thane didn't feel that Vakarian threatened Thane’s relationship with Shepard, and Vakarian would probably step aside to allow Shepard whatever happiness she wished even if he were aware of his own feelings. His love was just…there. Thane certainly wasn’t going to encourage him towards her, not now, but perhaps…

 

_After_.

 

It was comforting to think that there would be someone there for his Siha after he passed on. Between the force of nature that was Shepard, and Vakarian’s unshakeable, absolute loyalty to her, Thane doubted whether even death would be able to separate them again after they realized what they could have with each other.

 

Thane stoked over Shepard's hair—and that was so strange, human hair; nothing like it in the galaxy—and slipped into a quasi-meditative space, most of him still in the present with her, stroking her hair, relishing her soft breath against his collarbones, her weight in his lap, her utter trust, the ease and relaxation she so rarely allowed herself in this mission against the Collectors. His next thought startled him so much that he stiffened, making Shepard murmur and shift in her sleep.

 

_Why am_ I _allowing death to separate us_?

 

He forced himself to relax and Shepard settled again. He hadn't even thought about the lung transplant in months. Years. The offer had come during his battle-sleep, so much useless and incoherent noise, pointless. He hadn't wanted to prolong that existence. But now?

 

For the first time in so, so long, when he looked at his life he was glad to have made it this far, to have made it to meet her. For the first time in what felt like centuries, he thought of the end of his life not with peace and subtle longing but with resentment. And _fear_.

 

She changed everything. She reunited him with his son; they were talking again. And she had _saved_ his son, not just from following a path that was wrong for him, but saved his _life_. And as though that weren't enough, she had gone on to save his future, setting him up with Bailey and C-Sec.

 

Then, she had straightened, stretched, and gotten back to safeguarding the future of every spacefaring race in the galaxy. As though she could. As though she had just done something much simpler, much smaller than changing the shape of his entire life with a few words and barely lifting a hand.

 

He didn’t want to die.

 

She changed _everything_.

 

His wry chuckle woke her and she stirred, nuzzling his frill almost unconsciously. “What’s funny? Is my hair doing something weird again?”

 

He shook his head and kissed her forehead. “Your hair is no stranger than ever.”

 

“Huh. Thanks, I _think_. What was funny?”

 

“I was just thinking.”

 

“Not remembering?”

 

He hummed. “A bit of both.”

 

“Mm. And?”

 

He hesitated and she adjusted herself to see his face more clearly, his arms still around her. With a mental shrug, he went for honestly. “You make life worth living.”

 

Shepard's eyebrows raised in disbelief, and he could tell she was about to loose some probably self-deprecating quip, when something she noticed mad her pause. She examined his face more closely, seriously. After several seconds, her brow furrowed and she ventured, “Are you…alright, Thane? Is the Kepral’s—are you in pain?”

 

Thane cupped her cheek, stroking over her cheekbone with his thumb and smiling when she leaned into it despite the concern still on her face. “I am fine, Siha. I would tell you if it were otherwise.”

 

She nodded, believing him but looking as though she wanted to ask another question. Clearly not opting to ask whatever was on her mind, she instead went with “So, what brought that on, then?”

 

He paused, then “ _I wait with the sun at my back, a carefully chosen position, the shuttle louder as it approaches. More mercenaries, at least half a dozen. No threat, not with snipers of this caliber watching out for me, but a nuisance all the same._

_“The shuttle windshield breaks, the glint of glass as it shatters and falls. A small hole, impossible to see were my eyes not enhanced, and the pilot dead with one shot, a level of precision I have never seen or achieved. The body slumps forward, the shuttle yawing and careening past me into a building behind, spinning into the rock. A burst of flame, bright against the sunset._

_“Vakarian’s awe, as though speaking my thoughts. Siha’s quiet satisfaction._

_“ ‘Did you see that’, ‘Astounding, Shepard’, and accomplished while on her back, weapon wrong side up, scope likely unusable._

_“A ‘secret’. A sure falsehood. ‘Garrus is still the better sniper’. He adores her.”_

 

Thane blinked himself back to the present. Shepard looked confused, blinking. “I make life worth living because I'm a good shot?”

 

Thane laughed quietly. “No, Siha. Though that helps.” He gathered her close against his chest again, disinclined to elaborate, and she shrugged and didn’t press. Almost an hour later, Thane added quietly, “Just know that it is true.”

 

Shepard, asleep, did not reply.


End file.
